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Attorney General William Tong today joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general in challenging the Trump Administration’s demand that higher education institutions provide new data via a recently added component to the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS), a collection of interrelated surveys administered by the Department of Education.
The purpose of this new survey is to track institutions’ compliance with the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which says that race cannot be used as a factor in admissions.
The coalition argues the implementation of the new survey requirements "leaves institutions vulnerable to inadvertent errors and unreliable data that could lead to costly penalties and baseless investigations into their practices, and that it jeopardizes student privacy by requesting in-depth information about individual students."
“These data demands have nothing to do with fairness or the law. This is more of Donald Trump and Linda McMahon’s scorched earth crusade to give kids with backgrounds they like and prefer an advantage in elite college admissions. These surveys are methodologically useless and inappropriately invasive. We’re suing to protect student privacy and the integrity of our college admissions systems,” said Tong.
Administered through the Department of Education (ED), IPEDS is a mandatory survey that gathers data from colleges, universities, and technical and vocational programs participating in federal student financial programs. Since 1986, it has served as a valuable tool for reliable data collection and statistical reporting by universities.
On August 7, 2025, President Trump issued a memo on ensuring transparency in higher education admissions, stating that, "Greater transparency is essential to exposing unlawful practices and ultimately ridding society of shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies."
"Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being. It is therefore the policy of my Administration to ensure institutions of higher education receiving Federal financial assistance are transparent in their admissions practices," wrote Trump, aiming to use the IPEDS data collection portal to more efficiently organize and utilize admissions data received from institutions.
Following the memo, ED Secretary Linda McMahon announced new requirements for institutions demanding they report data via IPEDS disaggregated by race and sex and retroactively report data from the past seven years. On December 18, 2025, following a notice and comment period in which members of the coalition provided comments opposing the new rules, the Trump Administration finalized the new requirements. The deadline for institutions to provide the new data is March 18, 2026.
In the lawsuit, Tong and the coalition argue that the ED’s implementation of the new data requirements "ignores the incredible burden they place on institutions and dramatically increases the possibility of inadvertent reporting errors and unreliable data."
The coalition also argues the data demands "jeopardize student privacy and could lead to individuals being easily identified."
The attorneys general further insist the Trump Administration’s actions are "contrary to law, fail to observe the procedure required by law, and are arbitrary and capricious" and that implementation of the new data requirements was "unlawful" and will place an "undue burden" on colleges and universities.
That makes it 50 legal actions -- "Tongfare" -- against the Trump Administration.
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